


A Happy Ending Might Be Nice

by PunJedi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Crowley Needs a Hug (Good Omens), Crowley reacting to the bookshop fire, Episode: s01e05 The Doomsday Option, Gen, M/M, Not Really Character Death, References to Shakespeare, suggestion of a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-27 18:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19386736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunJedi/pseuds/PunJedi
Summary: What happens when you're a demon, in love with your best friend, and he dies? When you were supposed to have an eternity together—oh, yes, with the occasional spats and century-long-arguments, but that's to be expected, that's just the way they work—but it's snuffed out before it can ever become a reality, a candle flame guttering out in the dark?Whatthen?Shakespeare had one thing right: parting really is such sweet sorrow, if "sweet" is a synonym for "bloody painful."The store is empty. Decimated. Crowleyburns.Aziraphale already has.





	A Happy Ending Might Be Nice

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate title: crowley's a mess
> 
> My entire though process creating this thing can be summed up as:  
> Me: oh i loved good omens! it had so many cute, funny, endearing moments!  
> Also me: i’m going to write a one-shot solely based around The Most Angst-Filled Moment in the entire gd show
> 
> (I didn't tag for major character death because Aziraphale isn't dead and Crowley learns this at the very end, but the whole story revolves around the idea that Aziraphale really is gone.)

Art imitates life. (Or something to that effect. Crowley isn’t the one who wastes time reading. Oh, talk to him if you want gardening tips, or a convoluted scheme to melt demons on the doormat should they come knocking, or a way to mildly inconvenience your fellow Londoners and yourself at the same time. But books? That’s Aziraphale’s thing, always has been.)

Anyway. Art and life, mimicry. Crowley, left to his own devices, would be inclined to dismiss it as human rubbish and move on. (Though some of his favorite things are quote-unquote human rubbish. For example, luxury cars.) Oh, Aziraphale would bicker with him over it, go into how fascinating humanity’s philosophies were, and did you know they were debating the existence of angels and demons now? A bit foolish, in my opinion, given that I’m fairly sure I exist, but it’s the  _ principle  _ of the thing, my dear boy. And Crowley would fake disinterest, and Aziraphale would get puffed up in indignation, and life would go on. Crowley would keep loving him and he would be alive and life would go on.

This all runs through his mind as he hurtles like a speed demon through the streets of London, toward the  _ smoke _ in the distance, the fire reaching its needy hands to the sky. Aziraphale’s voice echoes in his mind like he was sitting in the passenger seat and  _ hell and heaven above— _

The bookstore is on fire, as if some of Hell’s flames slithered up through the earth and claimed it for its own, an extension of itself in the mortal world, a middle finger sent up to the only angel on Earth.

The only angel on Earth. Aziraphale isn’t capable of using a phone not attached to his bookstore, he’d  _ called him earlier.  _ Where is he.  _ Where is he. _

Crowley doesn’t pray, doesn’t think he can without vaporizing or causing a rift in time-space, but he does leap out of his car and into the shop like a bat out of… well, you know. What are flames when you’re a demon? What’s a door if not something you can blow out of the way in your rage and your fear? What’s love if it can’t be lost? Cheapened, Aziraphale’s philosophers would argue. No pain, no gain.  _ Fuck _ the philosophers.

The store is empty. Decimated. Crowley  _ burns _ .

Aziraphale already has.

And it’s art, it’s life, it’s  _ Shakespeare _ , sheer goddamn poetry. The angel burns up while the demon burns for him, while he burns his last ties to his own kind with a plant mister and a bucket of holy water. It’s almost literally Shakespeare, he thinks—he’d know better than most.

Oh, he may have mocked  _ Hamlet _ , but that Shakespeare guy was all right. He’d talked with him a bit, you know, to see how one of the “most brilliant literary minds in existence” worked before its depressingly short life ran its course. They may have gone out for a drink. Or two. Or several.

It’s mind-boggling, to him, that a demon’s alcohol tolerance can be just as bad as an ordinary human’s. After several thousand years, shouldn’t he be past bemoaning his maudlin love story of a life whenever he’s faced with a particularly nice vintage? No, evidently not. He can drain the wine from his blood with a thought but that’s the extent of it—he cannot any more drain his traitorous thoughts from his head than he can the blood from his heart. It is hard, being a demon in love with an angel, his love caught and trapped behind high fences and impassable barricades, yelled by someone far, far below to a face far, far above. Words praising the sun fall on deaf ears. The half-words of a demon, the not-quite confessions, the I-don’t-dare-say-it’s—those are inaudible.

Crowley rambled this all in a drunken soliloquy of his own, and Shakespeare, though just as deep into his own cups, seemed to connect with it, seemed to listen. He’d cried, “By Jove, I think you’ve got something here!” and then stood up, walked off, muttering things under his breath like “such sweet sorrow” and “a story of more woe.” The night, Crowley’d gathered, was over, and he’d sobered himself up and gone on with his life—his long, eternal life spent at the bottom of a balcony, looking up.

He hadn’t thought about that night until centuries later, when he caught sight of a book sitting on Aziraphale’s desk—what’s new, ha, a book in a bookshop—a little something called  _ Romeo and Juliet  _ by good old Billy Shakespeare. It was creased and worn, as if it had been touched by many, many hands, despite the fact that Aziraphale rarely lets humans touch his books. So maybe—not many, many hands, but one pair of hands (a nice pair that he’s spent far too much time studying, but that doesn’t bear thinking about), many, many times.

Crowley didn’t saunter his way to Hell by resisting curiosity. He picked up the book.

He borrowed it—though “stole it” might be a better term, especially for a demon, hey, there’s something for you all down in Hell, I stole from an angel—and read it in a night. Recognized it even quicker. Well, Shakespeare, I hope you enjoy your star-crossed lovers, your tragedy. Love is a tangled thing, messy as a heart cut open on the operating table, veined and pulsing and dangerous to navigate. But he’d taken comfort in the differences—he was far older than two teenagers, maybe even a tad wiser, and he had an eternity of life ahead of him. They both did. No poison or suicide or foolhardy schemes, not for him, not for his angel. He might never know the full heady extent of love recognized and reciprocated—and why should he, when this love, this thing living within him, didn’t belong in him in the first place—but he would not know their mortal anguish, either.

Shakespeare had managed to create a human story out of one based in the stars. And Crowley has to give him props for that, however grudgingly.

So after ineffable plans and bollocksed schemes and holy water lead him to an inferno of a bookshop, it’s all he can do to not march up to Heaven and sock God in Her face (and maybe find Shakespeare and give him one, too). _This was your plan?_ he wants to scream. _Your bloody ineffable plan?_ _Doomsday can come and even the “good guys” don’t care and the only one of them worth knowing dies for it?_

_ It wasn’t supposed to end this way,  _ he thinks. Their story, their saga of six thousand years, was never meant to end in tragedy. Tragedies were for the stage; life was far more complicated. Pure black and white don’t occur naturally—it’s gray, always gray. And maybe Heaven can manage a white so blindingly pure it’s scrubbed clean of sin, and Hell a black as deep as the ocean depths, dark as mindless hate. But Crowley’s always been gray, first white with enough black to push him down, down, down… now black with enough white to make him an outcast. Even his clothes—black, maybe, in common usage, but they’re nothing more than a shade of deep gray.

And Aziraphale might play at stark white, but he’s the grayest angel Crowley’s ever had the pleasure to know.

He…  _ was _ … that angel. (Past tense, gone, something no amount of miracles can reverse.)

Fuck.

And all at once, Crowley can’t take it. He’s crumpled in a burning building—in his  _ world _ as it burns down around him. Isn’t that a picture, a demon wreathed in fire, trapped in his own personal hell, eyes glittering mad and infernal in the red light? Isn’t it worthy of being immortalized—in a painting, in a photo, maybe, even, in a play written four centuries before? The setting, the character, both different; the staggering, crippling loss the same?

Shakespeare was too good, Crowley thinks. He’d taken their beginning and followed it to its natural, inevitable conclusion, a place where Crowley never dared to linger. Why languish in possibilities when the chances were so minuscule? Why would Hell bother with one pesky angel when their oh-so-loyal lieutenant is taking care of it, yes Lord Beelzebub, good isn’t winning on Earth? They  _ wouldn’t _ bother—so Aziraphale should have been  _ safe. _

But now he is ash, or the angelic equivalent, and Crowley feels like soot smeared on the floor. On the dirty, flaming floor he’s still kneeling on.

He stands up—his strides are just as steady as they’ve always been, he can’t shake, he can’t falter—he gets into his car (the only thing left on the Earth that he gives a shit about, except maybe one or two plants and the idea of humanity in general)—and drives, drives and drives until he can find somewhere that’s worth going, a parking lot to fist fight God in or a cliff to stand on the edge of and scream or—

Or a bar. To get absolutely, out-of-his-skull smashed.

What good is fine wine when there’s no one with you to savor it, to indulge yourself with? Pour me the strongest stuff you’ve got—no, pour me two. Keep it fucking  _ coming _ , because that’s what the universe has done, isn’t it? It’s kept the punches coming, and that’s just the way of the world, but this sharp one-two of apocalypse and then Aziraphale is too  _ much. _ He’s out for the count, bruised and battered, which is  _ ridiculous _ . He’d escaped the forces of Hell by the skin of his teeth only to be destroyed by the one thing a demon should never have to worry about: lost love.

All he has is a blasted  _ book _ and a blasted  _ car _ , but at least he still has his blasted  _ life.  _ Unlike someone else he could name. (Could name? As if his name isn’t written into Crowley’s very soul, carved into the scarred blackened flesh of his heart, just recently healed over and now bleeding anew. His name has six thousand years worth of history stored within its four syllables. His name is only four syllables, ten letters, and wouldn’t a rose by any other name still be a rose, or whatever the line was in that  _ godforsaken play _ ? But those years had inscribed meaning into the meaningless, and the word  _ Aziraphale _ would never lose its place in his heart.  _ Damn it all. _ )

And yes, drinking makes him maudlin. Just ask Shakespeare—he wrote a play from it. Maybe this new tragedy, the end of the old story, would inspire a new one. Distantly, hazy with alcohol, he contemplates the sole remnant of his best friend’s life. Wonder if Agnes Nutter had predicted  _ this _ one. Would’ve been nice to have had a warning. Even if all he could do with it was say goodbye, and say those three little words he’s been whispering in the space between them for Heaven and Hell know how long.

Decades ago, he’d hot-footed his way into a church, lit it aflame and saved Aziraphale and his books. (He’d said “Little demonic miracle of my own.” He’d meant something so much bigger, something impossible.) This time, the flame was not his doing; Aziraphale and his books are gone; all but one. One last miracle, courtesy of Crowley, demon extraordinaire. He can save you from a Nazi smuggling ring and your own foolish good-hearted hare-brained schemes, but not a housefire.

Can he get a  _ wahoo _ ? An A for effort? “Can I get another drink?” Maybe he slurs it, he doesn’t know, but the bartender has seen enough people drowning their misery in heady liquor and burning throats that it needs no translation.

_ Parting is such sweet sorrow,  _ Crowley thinks, and laughs and laughs and laughs. Shakespeare was onto something.

(And after he is well and truly wasted, once again lamenting his fall and everything that led him to this damnable bar on this damnable earth, thunder cracks. An impossible face appears before him—lacking a body, maybe, but unmistakable. Beautiful, if he dares think it. And Crowley begins to wonder if they might rewrite their star-crossed tragedy after all.)

(Not that he goes in for that. Sappy romantic literature? That’s Aziraphale’s territory.)

(But. Still. A happy ending might be nice, for once.)

**Author's Note:**

> Can I hear a wahoo?


End file.
